Do you miss the performance in Flare 3 in v4? here's how...

[forfear]

Unless you've got a dual core, in the office i work from a Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz circa 2004.

In Flare 4, opening projects will take a performance hit, and authoring, renaming topics and projects seem to hit a real performance snag.

Here's how to get performance back up to almost Flare 3 levels
- Disable intellisense (its akin to what developers have in Visual Studio and other IDEs, which is super useful, but disable it, if you don't have the power) Edit > intellisense
- Disable Collecting Phrases ( much better performance boost, (Tools > Options > Analyzer)
- Do a disk defrag

Although Flare 4 seems to run a bit slower in the content editing, and authoring workflow, due to the added bulk of new features, do take note that the Stylesheet Editor (Simple View) has been supremely quickened with some nifty tricks to improve grid view performance in and refreshes on wide screen monitors)..much better

[RamonS]

Unless you've got a dual core

DotNet doesn't do anything with dual core anyway, but still, dual cores are faster than a 2004 PC, which is by the way the brick I have to use at work as well.

Thanks for sharing the hints.

[forfear]

MVP's we gotta put more stuff out for the community.

I think all of us are really hunkering down in the last few days and really just trying to break through all the new Flare 4 features and the initial learning curve...the forum i notice is just waiting to explode with new v4 related stuff only 'we' can figure out .. haha

[KevinDAmery]

If you have a multi-threaded OS then *in theory* the dual cores should allow the OS to run on one core and Flare to run on another. How much difference this makes in practice is debatable....

[RamonS]

As far as I know it is that the OS runs processes on both cores whereas singe core platforms such as .NET only run processes on CPU0. So yes, the multiple cores are not totally useless, but it isn't that the OS goes out of the way to release resources so that applications based on yesteryear's technology can run faster. There may be some benefit depending on how the .NET runtime makes use of multi-core capable OS processes.
In regards to the threads, multi-threaded seems to be necessary in order to run an app on multiple cores, but you can have multiple threads running on the same core, which doesn't do much other than making sure that each thread gets some processing time at least at some point.
In any case, it is not that double the cores means half the time needed for processing or something in that direction. That vast majority of software (except for games) available these days makes mediocre use of the resources available. And runtimes like .NET aren't helping either.

[NorthEast]

The only real difference I've noticed with PCs I've been using in the last 5 years is that when an application crashes (and Flare is the top of the list for this), my whole PC doesn't freeze and I can use other applications whilst it blows up.

[BobMerrill]

I've just gotta say - I have a dual-threaded 3.2Gig P4. I bought this machine because I edit audio and video and wanted to make sure that the machine would serve me well for awhile, which it has. I realize there are faster machines out there now, but this is machine is no slouch. I can do an awful lot of audio and video signal processing with it before it complains.

We are talking about word processing here! I'm sorry, but I don't feel there's any excuse for *any* decrease in performance on a machine like mine. I think we have the .NET framework to thank for the bloat that is causing the performance hit. And it's still a pretty big hit, even after disabling Intellisense and the other stuff that was recommended in this thread.

Bob Merrill

[NorthEast]

The only real performance difference I've noticed is that the first full scan can take some time - but you only get that the very first time you open a project, and you can still work on the project whilst it it scanning.

In everyday use I haven't actually noticed Flare v4 to be any slower or faster v3, the only noticeable difference is in the build speed which is a lot faster - by about 65% for most of my projects.

[RamonS]

From this and other threads it seems as if the experiences with Flare 4 range from dog slow to tremendously faster compared to 3.1. I find this really interesting and wonder if there is a runtime profiler for DotNet applications. It may give some clues where the holdup is on the slowed down systems.

[BobMerrill]

In everyday use I haven't actually noticed Flare v4 to be any slower or faster v3, the only noticeable difference is in the build speed which is a lot faster - by about 65% for most of my projects.

Hmm. I haven't built my biggest project yet (because it takes so long ) - I'll have to try that. I think a profiler would be a great idea, Ramon...

Having whined about the performance, the PDF build and pasting options make V4 a great leap forward in functionality, and finally make this product worth the price of admission.

Bob

[NorthEast]

Hmm. I haven't built my biggest project yet (because it takes so long :o) - I'll have to try that. I think a profiler would be a great idea, Ramon...

I'd give it a try - I'm working on a project with over 1600 topics, and the build time went down from something like 17mins (v3) to 10mins (v4).

[RamonS]

I'm evaluating profiler options....stay tuned.

[BobMerrill]

I noticed that when I move the text cursor with arrow keys and get near relatively large table, navigation with arrow keys slows down substantially.

I had a thought that the "caret tag neighborhood" indicators might be slowing stuff down, so I turned them off. (So happy I was able to find that control - they have been a bane of my existence for a few releases now.) That didn't appear to make a difference.

I also thought that switching between print and web layouts might have an effect, but it doesn't seem to.

[FrancaSullivan]

Is there a recommended minimum PC configuration for Flare 4? I searched Help quickly and didn't find any. Currently, my PC configuration is:

Pentium 4 CPU 3.2 GHz
3.19 GHz 1 GB of RAM

Would more RAM help?
Would changing swap space help?

I've followed all the previous recommendation except for the disk defarg, I will do that next.

Thanks
Fran

[RamonS]

That depends on which OS you use.

[LTinker68]

Is there a recommended minimum PC configuration for Flare 4?

Minimum requirements are posted here http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/default_CSH.htm#FlareTop1.

[FrancaSullivan]

Thank You. I am running Windows XP and will consult the link for the requirements.

[wijnand]

.NET itself DOES support multithreading. The problem is you need to make sure that your application is written in such a way that it can support multithreading. I already made a guide in the general section on how to improve your speed. Everything flare does is very hard disk intensive, when you use intellisense you basically have a file its writing away everything. Another big change from 3.1 to 4 is that it automatically does analyser for you whenever you make big changes so that will definatly slow your entire system down. The upside however is that you dont have to wait for 20 minutes for a advanced scan to finish when you are running analyser to see whats causing things to bork up.

A big thing about .NET is when you run your application for the first time it "compiles" it to be optmized for your specific CPU architecture, so the frst time you start flare it might be a bit slow but it will become faster. I personally dont think CPU has much to do with your performance in flare. I think you have to look at your hard disk as the culprit and RAM. you can always disable intellisense, and another thing you can do is to see what is causing the slow down by going to your task manager to see what is botteling things up. Your RAM or CPU if neither are peaking then your harddisk is being the culprit.

[RamonS]

That on the fly compile is as far as I know just an option, not a given for .NET based applications. Some applications recompile forms and modules on the fly each time the application is run. Nice example for that is MS SQL Management Studio. It is dog slow when using it first, but then it improves in performance (although I wouldn't call it fast).
DotNet is multithread capable, but the question was more about if it utilizes multiple cores. Based on what I was told from a source I considered reliable .Net is not multi-core capable, which turns out to be incorrect. From what I read in your post and in other places is that the application has to be coded for multiple threads and threads are to be able to run in parallel. If there is a task that requires data from a different task than they cannot run in parallel and thus having even 80 cores doesn't make things go faster. I have no idea if and how that applies to Flare and if Flare is optimized for multiple parallel threads.

[wijnand]

The jest behind Multithreading is basically that you try to split up your program in such a way that multiple parts of your program are split up into their own entities that can run on their own without interfering with the other "threads" you are making. In games generally they tend to split games up into the different things the game engine has to do: Physics, Graphics, Sound etc. These are all components that generally do not need information from one another. The danger of multithreading is that it adds a big layer of Complexity to your program. Instead of just having one memory, and a single bin of information where you can grab things out you have to ensure that the threads do not require information from one another. For example if I try to break up my graphical engine into 4 threads that all spawn individual objects that appear on the screen. But I have a single thread dealing with the actual rendering. I suddenly have 4 threads trying to communicate with one thread thus causing a "lock out" while one thread is being processed the other 3 are just waiting for their turn htus causing a tremendous slow down if not outright crash.

There are barely any applications that support multithreading, Dual Core has been very popular since 2006-7 and its only now that you slowly see games and programs taking advantage of it. Flare is a program that on a CPU level barely requires CPU cycles it only needs CPU to read text files and XML files for integrity etc. so you will definitly need a very large project before it becomes a problem CPU wise in flare. and before that I think your hard disk will kill itself.